The present invention relates in general to broadcast communications and in particular to apparatus and methods for increasing the information available on a certain broadcast at a certain time.
In its early days, television consisted of a few major stations with one educational station thrown in for good measure. When one was out of town on business or visiting a relative, finding the desired program was not difficult due to the limited selection available. The expansion of the cable television industry has vastly changed the amount and the quality of the television programming available to the viewing public such that finding the desired program may be time consuming and difficult. Finding what station is broadcast on what channel is the first stumbling block. Unless one is familiar with all the shows broadcast on a particular channel or is willing to watch a channel until it takes a station break, this task could prove formidable. To only make things more frustrating, every time one changes a channel, this task must be repeated.
In a somewhat similar manner, sports fans are oftentimes frustrated because the broadcast station does not show the score of the sporting event often enough. Sports fans may be flipping through the sporting events trying to get an update on all the scores, only to be disappointed by the seemingly purposely sluggish manner in which the stations post the scores. In addition, money is oftentimes wagered upon sports scores, which increases the allure of a constant score update system.
Most televisions only display the channel number of the selected channel. Some also display the time. Recently, several televisions have come on the market which allow the user to program in up to four characters of information describing the channel. This information, such as station call letters or the network, is printed on the screen with the channel number when a channel is selected. However, a special television is necessary to provide this function.
Thus, a need has arisen for a way of harnessing the huge array of public programming into a stand-alone user friendly entertainment system. Such a system would provide network and/or show title information at a minimum. Such a system should be inexpensive and be capable of being integrated into present communications transmitters and receivers.
Some televisions are already equipped to strip and display text or other icon information, i.e. Close Captioning for the Hearing Impaired. As used herein, icons include any text strings or other symbolic items. The present invention improves on this idea, wherein some descriptors, in the form of text for a title or numerals for a sport score, of the displayed show be broadcast with the show, and then displayed either on the television display or on a separate display. One simple method of broadcasting these descriptors could be to imbed the descriptors in the Close Caption text and mark it with special characters. Then, the close captioning equipment could be used to strip the descriptors for display on all receivers. Receivers for the hearing impaired could display both. In this manner, program or station specific information could be displayed on the same screen as the program being broadcast or on a separate display.